164 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



about every other day they would wander about 

 the flat stones that formed there the bed of this 

 apology for a creek and appeared to be hunting 

 some kind of living food. They therefore appeared 

 in a new role, and I gave the matter considerable 

 attention until I found that the lodged carcass of a 

 drowned calf was the attraction, and only at certain 

 stages of this creek, that rose and fell with every 

 petty shower, could they get a chance to nibble at it. 

 The incident showed, I thought, that food was very 

 scarce, and they must indeed have very keen eye- 

 sight to have found this tidbit, hidden as it was 

 among rocks at the foot of a steep wooded cliff. 



The Black Vulture is the more Southern species, 

 and is a common feature of many Southern cities as 

 well as the country, and depended upon to some ex- 

 tent as a scavenger. Nuttall's account is as follows : 



" Their flight is neither so easy nor so graceful as that of the Turkey- 

 buzzard. They flap their wings and then soar horizontally, renewing 

 the motion of their pinions at short intervals. ... In the country, 

 where I have surprised them feeding in the woods, they appeared 

 rather shy and timorous, watching my movements alertly like hawks, 

 and every now and then one or two of them, as they sat in the high 

 boughs of a neighboring oak, communicated to the rest, as I slowly 

 approached, a low bark of alarm or waugh, something like the sup- 

 pressed growl of a puppy, at which the flock by degrees deserted the 

 dead hog upon which they happened to be feeding. Sometimes they 

 will collect together about one carcass to the number of two hundred 

 and upward, and the object, whatever it may be, is soon robed in 

 living mourning, scarcely anything being visible but a dense mass of 

 these sable scavengers, who may often be seen jealously contending 

 with each other, both in and out of the carcass, denied with blood 

 and filth, holding on with their feet, hissing and clawing each other, 

 or tearing off morsels so as to fill their throats nearly to choking, and 

 occasionally joined by growling dogs, the whole presenting one of 



